 | | 06-25-2015, 01:44 PM |
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#55
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Master Fan
Joined: Aug 2008
Posts: 22,772
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Indiewire included Rachel's performance as Regina George as one of their top 5 best performance by Rachel:
Quote:
"Mean Girls" (2004)
With her biggest role to that point being in 2002's "The Hot Chick" which not even the most avid of McAdams fans can bear to sit through more than once (only the nadir of the body-swap genre would have anyone body-swapping with Rob Schneider), she again got cast as a bitchy "popular" high schooler in her very next film. However this time out, it would be in the generation-defining high school comedy "Mean Girls" directed by Mark Waters from the script by Tina Fey. It's funny that McAdams, whose subsequent star image often plays on the inherently sympathetic nature of her appeal, should find her first really great role as a villain, but that's exactly what her unforgettable Regina George is. Spoiled, petty, narcissistic and manipulative, she is almost the antithesis of Romantic Lead McAdams (who is invariably both steadfast and self-deprecating: "I look a bit like a squirrel" she claims in "About Time"). As a result, it's Regina who comes in for the cruelest punishments. Still, although tricked into gaining weight, stripped of her spiteful support system and eventually forced to attend prom in a back brace, perhaps the cleverest part of McAdams' performance (along with Fey's clever script) is that we don't leave the movie cackling at her downfall. Instead, there's a genuine lesson in Regina's last-minute transformation into someone we actually care to see redeemed, and that could only come from a performance in which the character is inhabited as a person, rather than a cartoon character. "It's only funny when the sucker's got dignity" quoth Krusty the Clown on the philosophy of pie-throwing, but it stands for all great pride-before-a-fall performances, and McAdams makes Regina George simultaneously hateable, redeemable and damn funny. In a touchpoint film littered with great performances from its rising star cast, hers might be the actual powerhouse.
More: The Essentials: The 5 Best Rachel McAdams Performances | The Playlist
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